


Sans Your Memory

by Hino



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-28
Updated: 2015-10-28
Packaged: 2018-04-28 15:09:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5095223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hino/pseuds/Hino
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some days, Sans doesn’t remember anything about Gaster.<br/>Other days, Sans remembers too much.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sans Your Memory

Some days, Sans doesn’t remember anything about Gaster.  
Other days, Sans remembers too much.

 

He knows that the man was a scientist hired by Asgore to build the Core. Sometimes when he’s down there for work, scamming gold off people with water sausages in plastic bread, he feels like there’s someone watching him. It’s... oddly familiar. As if the presence had been looming somewhere in his past, in memories hastily shoved aside in order to deal with the Anomaly. He’ll turn to look at it, but, as usual, find nothing there. If it’s a particularly bad day, where the silhouette of a science lab clouds his mind, Sans’ll hear the static that the man spoke in, and his hands will form the shapes of his words. It’s like a trance, and once he snaps from it, the words and gestures are meaningless.

 

On days when he wakes long before the sun, Sans wanders out into the cold snow, sitting down in the chill with just a shirt and shorts. The numbness reminds him he’s still there, that he didn’t suffer the same way that Gaster did, falling into the Core and shattering. The biting chill in his bones distracts him from memories of tinkering in the basement, trying to use remnants and memories to drag a life back. The nametag given by the king, the labcoat he wore almost everyday, the few charred pieces of flesh they managed to drag out of the core with the most talented magicians. Sans never got the smell out of his own labcoat. He kept it stored in the basement, locked away where even the Royal Guard would never find it. The basement was a last resort now. Everytime he even went near it, the whir of the machine filled him, twisting and weaving time and space together as if it were knitting wool. It almost put the man back together, only to violently rip him apart at the last minute and scatter him again. It’s an image that haunts Sans when he thinks too hard, when he pushes past the wall of looped memories.

 

The day that the human brings up Gaster, it’s one of the days where Sans has other things on his mind. Flustered signs, something that Papyrus is trying to decipher, mean nothing to him, although he remembers it for later. He’s come far enough to know that sometimes, he just has to wait for the answers. His mind’s like a conveyer belt, bringing information and taking it away. Even the child’s own signing, different to Gaster’s motions, blur before his eyes, leaving it to Papyrus to translate. The taller never quite got the hang of it, always misplacing gestures or not noticing words, but he was doing his best. That was all Sans could ask of him; to do his best.

 

If Sans wanders away from Papyrus for too long, the thoughts come back, slamming into his mind with the force of a freight train. It fills his bones with static, with the deep, burnt rumble of Gaster’s voice, with the words he’d cried before being torn apart by the basement machine. His hands move in the signs that others offered him earlier and now, he finds he can translate them. Messages long overdue, phrases like “Forget me,” or “It’s all your fault.” It echoes in his mind, mingling with old phrases spoken when they’d first met. It bounces around his skull, drowning out the world, and his own screaming. He often has to steel himself for the return of those thoughts. The few times he hasn’t, blasters had manifested and blown holes in the walls. Papyrus had cradled him while he sobbed and screamed, taking hours to calm down. It was several loops ago, but since then, Sans minimized time away.

 

Sometimes in Waterfall, the echo flowers seem to be calling him with the same static that Gaster spoke with. No matter if he remembers him or not, it sends a chill down his spine. On the bad days, when the universe seems against him, he’ll find hands and symbols scrawled across his outpost. Despite the white noise that echoes in his bones, he’ll write them down to decipher on a better day, a time where he won’t snap at the realization of what’s happened.

  
On a day when he’s willing to face up to his own actions.  
When Sans scrapes away the last few symbols left on the post, he can feel someone there, watching him. He can feel hands on his shoulders and a voice hissing in his ear.  
Sans can feel his sins crawling on his back.

 

Some days, Sans doesn’t remember anything about Gaster.  
Other days, Sans remembers too much.

**Author's Note:**

> I was talking to a friend about Gaster and then thought about how Sans probably knew him, or had some relation. Then this happened.


End file.
